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International air travel now lets us go to so many places almost whenever we want, but this raises a very “first world problem” question, namely, where should one actually visit? So people tend to go online for inspiration and are often, unwittingly, bombarded with marketing material masquerading as genuine travel content.
Someone asked “Which city looks magical on Instagram but felt boring, overpriced, or exhausting in real life?” and travelers share their thoughts with the internet. So get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote your favorites and be sure to add your own thoughts and experiences to the comments down below.
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#2
Vegas.
ratvespa:
It always cracked me up that ads and billboards makes it look like everyone is having fun while gambling. Then you get in the casino and it looks anything but fun.
#3
Lol, Egypt by a pyramid.
Drak_is_Right:
Cairo traffic is exhausting, both literally and figuratively when you consider the car exhaust pollution.
#4
Dubai. Wasn't that expensive actuallt, the things I tried (compared to Copenhagen) but it felt super shallow, exhausting and boring.
Robert van Deventer 2 weeks ago
See my previous comments but I do agree that Dubai is utterly exhausting. Especially traffic.
#5
Idk if it looks magical on Instagram, but Monte Carlo was so boring and overpriced. I’ve always wanted to go, and besides the Cousteau museum, everything was not for me, in every sense of the word$$$.
slashthepowder:
100% agree. Outside of the F1 track i had no interest in anything else. It just felt like a harbour compared to the other spots around the French Riviera.
#6
I live in Munich and really like it, but I'll point out that Oktoberfest is almost certainly not as good as you think it is. Basically, imagine way overpriced beer, way too many drunken tourists, bad music, and carnival rides.
Basically any other beer festival in Bavaria, or even just random biergartens, will be much more pleasant and a much better bang for your buck.
#7
LA. You grow up watching Hollywood movies and then when you finally go... everything is far away, traffic is a nightmare and you realize your poor, so that LA lifestyle is just on TV. Lol dont get me wrong, I actually like LA and all the fun little food stops you can find, but d**n you need a car and paid parking everywhere.
Patricia Steward 2 weeks ago
Interesting little specialty museums -- and don't they have a subway now?
#8
Doha, Qatar.
Rollthembones1989:
I had a long layover in Doha and wanted to get out and see the city. There is literally nothing to do there.
#9
Pisa.
After looking at the tower for 5 minutes all that’s left to do is drink overpriced coffee.
#11
Miami is the best answer for the US.
bucknut86:
I had three days in Miami after a conference in Miami Beach. I rented a car and was meeting my wife in key west but since it was just me it was cheaper to just hang out at a hotel in Miami. There was some neat stuff and great food but honestly outside of downtown the city felt like one big rundown strip mall.
#12
Key West. Lot more run down and ugly than the highlighted pictures would have you believe. Also the coral bleaching is very bad.
#13
The Maldives. Cost is outrageous as everything needs to be flown in (think $20 OJ at breakfast). And at some resorts those overwater bungalows are pretty close together and not that private.
#14
Nashville. Cowboy Vegas, basically.
PlanetStarbux:
I disagree with OP on this one. Nashville is pretty awesome. Literally walk into any joint on the main street and you'll see to much musical talent.
Food is awesome
Whiskey drinking everywhere
Plenty of historical stuff
Mountains not that far away
If you can't find something to enjoy in Nashville, you're the problem.
#15
Honestly? Paris. Besides going to the Louv...naw I'm just kidding Paris is amazing.
Lemurian_Lemur34:
To be fair, Paris has a psychological condition named after it for how disappointing it is to some people, especially Japanese tourists.
#16
Dubrovnik in the height of the summer with cruise ships coming in, might as well be hell on earth.
I hear it's much nicer at quieter times and I can believe it.
#17
Bangkok. It feels like one giant cruise port in the worst way, and I say this as someone who likes cruising. Also the traffic is insanely, almost comically, bad. Like to the point you don't even want to bother going anywhere around the city that isn't within walking distance.
Also all those pretty temple pictures? They leave out the fact that the rest of the city is a concrete, semi-brutalist hellscape of air pollution and minimal green space.
Oh and the waterways all smell like sewage. But hey at least the food is amazing.
#18
MIAMI.
Everyone thinks it's all Miami Beach, and it's not. It's super overpriced everywhere, and the beach moreso. Burgers and fries for two at a restaurant on beach will easily cost you $100, no alcohol, no parking.
#19
Istanbul. I did LOVE and appreciate the history (Hagia Sophia, Grand Bazaar, Galata Bridge/Tower..) but it was just a tough city for me to connect with. Most of the “authentic” places didn’t necessarily feel safe to me as a solo female traveler, and I often felt like I had to have my defenses up more than usual to avoid being scammed or robbed, which is very unusual for someone that has lived in NYC for 10+ years and seen a lot of s**t here. The economic situation there is pretty dire and I don’t fault people for trying to simply make a living, but my expectations didn’t match reality.
Although I have no plans to return to Istanbul, I’d explore other places in Turkey with someone who is familiar with it more than I am, and I think that’s part of why I didn’t enjoy it - I just stayed in Istanbul (it was a few days stop-over after 2+ weeks in Central Asia)
On the bright side, I learned some new street scams I was completely unaware of!!
#20
Honolulu, Waikiki in particular. Not easy to get around without a car, and nothing I couldn't find on an East Coast beach - all outposts of chain bars and resorts. Plus the people working at the resorts seemed exhausted from tourists.
#21
Gary, Indiana.
idkwhattowriteee:
You can literally smell Gary from the highways yuck.
#22
Zurich. No reason to visit, literally. Just go straight to proper tourist traps in the alps or ignore the „influencer“ stuff and go hiking somewhere less touristy like the locals do.
#23
Marrakesh
Harassed by aggressive by jerk vendors at the medina for looking.
Also, went on a tour to the film studios (which are just sad, derelict left-behind film props that Moroccans decide to turn into an attraction) and the male tour guides spoke only to my partner and not to me.
The only good part was a cooking class I took at the Amal Center, which is a women's foundation, food was great but even then the people who hosted the class were racists. A tourist asked where Morocco's tea come from and the host made a face and said most of Morocco's tea is from China. I mean, where do you think tea originated? Do you think Morocco's climate can grow enough tea to sustain itself?
#24
LA. It’s is one of the most iconic and well known cities in the whole country, but when you get there, it is really just crazy traffic, rude + superficial people, and dirty beyond belief. Been there multiple times, and every time I struggle to see the appeal.
#25
Da Nang, Vietnam, felt like the whole city was built to be a tourist trap. On Instagram I could see so many reels calling it ‘The Miami of Asia’, but besides the few high-rise buildings in front of the sea, I couldn’t see it one bit.
#26
City? The region of The OBX and SOBX of North Carolina and all points at/above the 34° parallel North as it extends westward to roughly High Point/Burlington, NC is absolute garbage land. People rent one house for one week at a price they could rent two homes with all utilities covered for an entire year less than 4 miles from the water to “vacation” at. And let’s not speak of the land and ground water being toxic and unfit for cattle, hogs or even commercial chicken “farms” but is now littered with subdivisions from Rocky Mount to Oxford, South to Wendell and on down to Burgaw. It’s a chemical soup from Duke Energy coal ash, hog lagoons, decades of agricultural pesticides, herbicides and US Army, US Air Force And US Marines dumping endless toxins - Its unfit for animals.
A drop in the bucket compared to US military ongoing seepage by Kitty Hawk into the sea.
Skara Brae 2 weeks ago
OBX = Outer Banks, the string of long sandy islands along the eastern coastline.
#27
Oxford, UK. Maybe because I’ve just started living here, but a lot of people are just plain rude and entitled and there is not a lot to do. I much prefer northern England, eg Liverpool, where people are friendlier and the vibe is more chill.
Giraffe Sitter 2 weeks ago
I found Cambridge more pleasant than Oxford, but really there are better English towns than either one.
#28
Pretty much every city, tbh. If you let IG dictate your travel plans and life, you are missing out on the whole point of Travel. Put the phone down.
But to answer your question, I personally love Iceland, and have been there many times, but it doesn't look anything like Instagram.
Jack Lowry 2 weeks ago
Yep, Iceland is amazing but you need to get out to the country to appreciate it.
#29
Bali. Beautiful place but you can’t smell through Instagram and my partner and I both got ill twice from the sheer quantity of burning trash, plastic, and motorcycle exhaust. Basically gave us strep throat. Plus the locals just steal from the reserves so the wildlife is completely tarnished.
#30
Denver disappointed me. It felt like a big college campus, mostly designed for transplants working in tech. Homogenous. So many high rises and concrete, a lot of "things to do" when you've got money and don't mind the color gray. Seems walkable so long as you stay within the transplant campus areas, otherwise you run into displacement and poverty among the native population (I've read up on the Colfax stuff and seen it for myself too).
Some of the culture and history is preserved, but those things feel like islands and it's hard to shake the bleakness even while exploring the botanical gardens or art museum. I got to meet and chat with some people who grew up there and wished things were different. It isn't all bad, but I wasn't expecting the imbalance.
Other parts of Colorado were nice. I loved CO Springs a lot, especially with the immediate exposure to nature and the diversity of age and class within the area. People actually warned me about it because of the military base and religious population (I'm visibly very androgynous, and in an interracial lesbian marriage) but I felt so much more comfortable there than in Denver.
#31
Venice. To be fair, it was stupidly hot when I was there, so that might negatively impact my memory. But I found it to be crowded, dirty, and nowhere near as beautiful in person. Very overhyped in my opinion.
#32
If your entire Instagram image of Agra is the Taj Mahal, that is the answer. I enjoyed every other city I visited when I spent a month in India for work back in the day, but Agra was gross.
#34
Surprised I haven't seen Tulum here.
kennycakes:
I though Tulum was great, the archeological zone with El Castillo, the separate little downtown nearby, and the natural areas (beaches, cenotes, jungles) were fun to explore. I went 20 years ago, has it changed that much?
DreadedLaramie:
Massively. Do yourself a favour and don’t go back, keep the nice memories :)
Scott Rackley 2 weeks ago
Shame to hear that. I visited like 30 years ago, it was nice. There were iguanas everywhere and the beach was awesome.
#35
Atlanta is actually pretty beautiful and the food is great but it was tough to get around without driving and everything was so expensive.
They tried to charge me $40 cover at the club and after I walked away they dropped it to $20 and the vibes in there ended up being terrible.
Multa Nocte 2 weeks ago
From the photo, this must have been at height of Covid. I NEVER saw less than a trillion cars on the road there.
#36
To be super honest, I was somewhat underwhelmed by Cesky Krumlov. Many Asians evidently fly around the globe to visit it, but I did not think it is special compared to hundreds or thousands similar other towns in Europe. Which are much less crowded and cheaper to visit.
#37
I lived in Paris for almost two years as a foreigner. It’s beautiful and I love it but most tourists only see what they want you to see.
The is bureaucracy is exhausting but worth it for the health care. There are a lot of racism issues bubbling under the surface but most visitors are woefully ignorant and only see shiny things there.
It’s 10 years since the Bataclan and associated shootings and I lived there when it happened. My best friend had to hide in our favorite bar and just hope they don’t come there.
#38
Colmar, France
I'm eastern european. I can handle cold, rude people. But France is so next level rude I went back to my room and cried and didn't go back out again until it was time to catch my train.
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Zig Zag Wanderer 2 weeks ago
So few interesting places. I imagine instagram is a pretty dull experience, but happy never to have seen it!
Zig Zag Wanderer 2 weeks ago
So few interesting places. I imagine instagram is a pretty dull experience, but happy never to have seen it!
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